In today's business environment an individual receives digital messages from various sources and by various communication means. For example, an individual may receive messages from a fellow employee, from a customer, from a supplier or from any other relevant business contact. The sender of message may be internally located at the same worksite as the individual receipt, as typically is the case with fellow employees, or may be externally located outside of the workplace, as typically is the case with customers or suppliers. In addition to the variance in message source, digital messages are communicated to individuals by various digital means, such as electronic mail, voice mail, Short Message Service (SMS) communication, Multimedia Message Service (MMS) communication and the like. Moreover, the recipient of these messages is provided multiple means for receiving the messages. For example, email accounts can be accessed from a personal computer, a wired or wireless laptop computer, a wireless Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), a wireless cellular telephone or any other conceivable wired or wireless device capable of digital communication. Even voice mail, once limited to access via the wired or wireless telephone, can now be accessed via the personal computer, laptop computer, PDA or the like.
The vast majority of the digital messaging communication is conducted on a person-to-person basis. For example, one individual sends another individual an email or an SMS communication or one individual initiates a cellular telephone call to another individual. Much more limited are the communication options for person-to-group, person-community, person-to-place or person-to-application communication. This type of communication is also referred to herein as generic-recipient message, in which the user does not send the message to a specific individual but rather to a group, a community, a location or an application.
Email allows an individual to send a group email to multiple recipients; however, in this regard the user forms the group email address from a collection of known individual email addresses. In practice, the group email provides person-to-person communication to multiple recipients. The group email communication does not allow the sender to send an email correspondence to a group if the sender is unaware of the individuals that form the group.
The concept of generic-recipient messaging is best explained by providing examples.
An individual wishes to contact Company X and inquire about the status of a particular product that they recently ordered from Company X. The individual wishes to communicate via email. Unless the individual is aware of the specific individual within Company X that is handling this order, email communication can become somewhat problematic. Typically, the individual's only email option is to send an email correspondence to a generic Company X email address and have a system administrator manually dispatch the email to a perceived intended recipient. Thus, the sender of the email is provided very little assurance that the email will be dispatched to the proper entity handling the order. In many of these instances, the individual's email is dispatched to the incorrect recipient and, thus, the individual never receives an appropriate reply.
This same dilemma presents itself in the example of an individual trying to contact Company X via telephone communication to status an outstanding order. The individual is unaware of the direct line telephone number of the individual handling the account and, thus, the only option presented to the individual is to contact Company X's main switchboard and either ask for a specific department or explain to the main switchboard operator the question at hand. All too often the switchboard operator will dispatch the call to the incorrect recipient, thus, frustrating the individual who is trying to status an outstanding order. In other instances, the switchboard operator is unaware of whether a recipient is available to receive the call and will invariably lead the individual caller into the unavailable recipient's voice mail system. In the same regard, automated key-tone or voice command systems, which obviate the need for a switchboard operator, are often cumbersome and confusing to the user and provide even greater opportunity to dispatch the call to an incorrect recipient.
In addition to properly dispatching these generic-recipient messages to proper recipients, a need exists to identify and prioritize the dispatch of generic-recipient messages that require priority dispatching. For example, in the email scenario the sender of the email may emphasize the messages importance by flagging the message or otherwise highlighting the subject header or contents or the message. However, if the sender of the email fails to designate the message as a priority message, it is unlike that the system administrator who dispatches the message will recognize the importance and subjectively provide for the requisite higher priority. Additionally, even in the instance in which the system administrator receives a message marked by the sender as requiring priority, manual dispatch provides no assurance that the priority will be forwarded to the determined recipient upon dispatch.
Therefore, a need exists to develop a system and methods for dispatching generic-recipient messages to proper recipients. The desired system should function without an expensive private telephone network or a central system for short incoming text, graphic or voice communication. In addition, the desired dispatch system should be generally automatic and, thus, require minimal manual intervention by system administrators. The desired system and method should be capable of supporting both local and remote generic-recipient message dispatching so as to achieve a lowest cost alternative. In addition, the desired system and method should support the dispatch of generic-recipient messages over various communication means, such as short-range wireless, Internet, cellular networks and the like. A need also exists to develop a system and methods for providing dispatch priority to generic-recipient messages. The desired system should provide for multiple priority schemes, such that priority can be given to generic-recipient messages depending on the communication network used to dispatch the message. Additionally, the priority system and methods should be automated to allow for message priority to be determined with minimal manual intervention by system administrators.